Take Flight
The August 2020 single "Take Flight" started with a request from Grant’s son’s 8th-grade teacher that he write a song that parents could sing to the children during their middle-school class promotion. As he wrote, he thought about the bittersweet nature of launching our children into the world, even as we struggle to let them go. Fast forward to the summer of 2020: coronavirus descended on the world, traditional rites of passage for youth were suspended indefinitely, nationwide protests in the wake of the murder of George Floyd. In this challenging and painful time of re-evaluation and reckoning, Grant was moved by their emotional resilience, by their courage in the face of the pandemic, and by their demands to end racism to offer up this song and the artistic collaborations it inspired.
As an artist who recognizes that if we are going to change the world for the better, we need to look beyond today and each day do something to ensure the future for the generations that follow us. Grant will be donating 50% of all funds raised from contributions to the "Take Flight" project and sales through Bandcamp to Friends of the Children, a national non-profit breaking the cycle of poverty through one-on-one youth support.
#TakeFlight mural by Alex Chiu and friends. Photo by Adolfo Cantú-Villarreal.
Performers
DARRELL GRANT | piano, keyboards
MICHELLE WILLIS | lead & background vocals
CLARK SOMMERS | bass
GREGORY UHLMANN | guitars
JORDAN PERLSON | drums
About the Music and Process
“Take Flight” is Grant’s first collaboration with vocalist Michelle Willis, whose amazing singing and songwriting can be heard with David Crosby’s Lighthouse Band, and on her own wonderful recordings. Willis contributed lead and background vocals as well as an ethereal vocal arrangement for the project. Grant also called on Chicago bassist Clark Sommers who played on his “The Territory” album, LA guitarist Gregory Uhlmann whose guitar-wizardry he first encountered producing vocalist Jeff Baker’s “Phrases” project, and the versatile Nashville drummer Jordan Perlson.
Filmmaker Adolfo Cantú-Villarreal, who Grant worked with on 21 Cartas, and visual artist Alex Chiu, who he met through his work on Sanctuaries, united to create the visuals for the project. The cover art for “Take Flight” is the mural Chiu designed that spent the summer of 2020 outside Portland’s A/C Marriott hotel. Grant and Chiu organized friends and community members to paint by number, while Cantú-Villarreal captured footage of the mural creation to create the film for “Take Flight.”
“I have cast my lot with those who, age after age, perversely, with no extraordinary power, reconstitute the world.”
